Klubbe & The Golden Coracle, Philip Dodd

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my review in any way and the thoughts expressed are my own. To

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my review in any way and the thoughts expressed are my own.

To be honest I went into this book knowing little about the actual plot apart from the fact that the creatures are anthropomorphic turtles, Turkles. Klubbe starts his adult life as a hermit to discover what he wants to do with his life. He decides to be an inventor and creates a spaceship known as the Golden Coracle. From there we follow his adventures.

First and foremost, the formatting of this ‘book’ was horrible. It was set out more like a poem, one line then a gap and so on. The language was also reminiscent of poetry. I’m not a poetry fan, at least not long poems and really hated this format. Often various adverbs were used one after another like the author couldn’t decide on which word to use. The writing style was very blunt and told the reader every little detail, leaving no mystery.

From the blurb, I assumed the story would end once Klubbe landed home but instead we watched as he and his friends retold the journey, in detail, to their people. It felt like it was going way to long for what it was described as. To make this even more extreme, we followed him for years as he invented other machines, went on adventures, got married and had kids. We not only followed Klubbe’s entire life but we then change to follow his son on his adventures. That was definitely not what I was expecting and made the story feel even slower and twice as long.

From the very beginning we witness numerous scenes which had no point such as eating and had frequent info-dumps on the Turkle world making the story incredibly slow. The dialogue was repetitive and was incredibly scripted.

It lacked any emotion, Klubbe and the others never seemed to feel anything and I didn’t feel anything for any of them. Klubbe becomes interested in the princess, though it was very emotionless. I was hoping that the lack of emotion was a trait belonging to Klubbe but the other characters were equally as detached. A nobody inventor wanting to marry the princess should have caused some tension and conflict but it was all very simple. ‘Sure, let’s get married’.

Throughout the entire book there was never any conflict. Nothing was ever difficult, it was all very easy going. ‘You’re a turtle? Fine. You want to go to space? Why not.’ Klubbe goes on numerous journey that I assume would be dangerous but no one was ever worried nor was there any difficulties. It was all just dull.

Klubbe and his crew land the ship on Earth which felt like a desperate ploy to bring humans in to make things more interesting. It didn’t. The Turkles could have met any number of intriguing creatures and bringing in humans was just a letdown, especially since the Turkle planet should be galaxies away and the scene was simply out of nowhere.

I was disappointed and feel bad that I feel this way but this book just did not click with me and I believe it could do with a lot more editing. Also, it would be good to change the blurb, instead of having it describe only Klubbe’s first adventure. It was very boring and emotionless. I give it 1/5. Sorry to those who enjoyed this piece, I know it was rated highly by many others.